Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Digital Citizenship Inside Highschool

So what is Digital Citizenship? Dictionary.com says that citizenship is teh character of an individual viewed as a member of society: behavior in terms of the duties, obligations, and functions of a citizen.(dictionary.com) In other words, it boils down to the acceptable practices of a society,
that a typical citizen
would take part in. Being a citizen of any state, or a member of any institution comes with acceptable and non acceptable behavior. Sociologists refer to those acceptable behaviors as social norms. 

The term digital simply refers to the use of digital media, ie, the internet. 
So, to smush them together into one term, it would be:
The adherence of social norms (acceptable behaviors) of a digital society.

Mark Ribble, creator of digitalcitizenship.net has made the same statement:

"Digital citizenship can be defined as the norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use."   --Mike Ribble

Citizens have a responsibility to abide by the "laws" in order to obtain the benefits of their society. So it is within a digital society. In order to enjoy the internet, we have to abide by some basic protocols if we want to keep ourselves from the possible pitfalls of this digital society.
So with that out of the way, we are going to discuss how Digital Citizenship relates to high school students. But rather than a drawn out and wordy talk, here's a short presentation to sum it all up.